St. Landry democrat., 1887-07-16
FROM DUNGEON TO PALACE
Rev. Il. Dewitt Talmage's Eloquent Ser
mon at The Hamptons.

mon AT Ine hdnpLOnS.
THE HAMPToNs, July 10.-The Brook
lyn Tabernacle being closed for enlarge
ment, the Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, D.
D., pastor, spends his first Sabbath away
from his flock the present season at this
summer home. His subject for to-day
was: From Dungeon to Palace" and
his text: "The time of my departure is
at hand"-II Timothy, iv, 6.
The way out of this world is so blocked
up with coffin and hearse and under
takers spade and screw driver that the
Christian can hardly think as he ought
of the most cheerful passage in all his
history. We hang black instead of
white over the place where the good man
gets his last victory. We stand weep
ing over a heap of chains which the
freed soul has shaken off, and we say:
"Poor man! What pity it was he had
to come to thisr' Come to what? By
the time the people have assembled at
the obsequies that man has been
three days so happy that all the
joy of earth accumulated would be
wretchedness beside it, and he might
better weep over you because you have
to stay than you weep over him because
he has to 60. 1t is a fortunate thing that
a good man does not have to wait to see
his own obsequies, they would be so dis
cordant with his own experience. If
the Israelites would go back to Egypt
and mourn over the brick -kilns they
once left, they would not be any more
silly than that Christian who should for
sake Heaven and come down and mourn
because he had to leave this world. Our
ideas of the Christians death are morbid
and sickly. We look upon it as dark
hole in which man stumbles when his
breath gives out. This whole subject
is odorous with varnish and disinfect-
ants, instead of being sweet with
mignonette. Paul, in my text, takes that
great clod of a word death" and throws
t away, and speaks of his "departure'-
beautiful, bright, suggestive word,
descriptive of every Christians release.
Now, departure implies start1ng-place
and place of destination. When Paul
left this world, what was the starting
point? 1t was scene of great physical
distress. 1t was the Tullianum the lower
dungeon of the Mamertine prison. The
top dungeon was bad enough, it having
no means of ingress or egress but
through an opening in the top. Through
that the prisoner was lowered, and
through that came all the food and air and
light received 1t was terrible place, that
upper dungeon; but the Tullianum was
the lower dungeon, and th@ was still
more wretched, the only light and the
only air coming through the roof, and
that roof the floor of the upper dungeon.
That was Paurs last earthly residence. 1t
was a dungeon just six feet and half
high. 1t was doleful place. 1t had the
chill of long centuries of dampness. 1t
was filthy with the long incarceration of
miserable wretches. It was there that
Paul spent his last days on earth, and it
is there that | see him to-day, in the fear
full dungeon, shivering, blue with the
cold, waiting for that old overcoat which
he had sent for up to Troas, and which
they had not yet sent down, notwith-
standing he had written for it,
If some skillful surgeon should go into
that dungeon where Paul is incarcerated
we might find out what are the prospects
of PauPs living through the rough i'm
prisonment. In the first place, he is an
old man, only two years short of seventy.
At that very time when he most needs
the warmth and the sunlight and the
fresh air, he is shut out from the sun.
What are those scars on his an kles
Why, those were gotten when he was
fast, his feet in the stocks. Every time
he turned the flesh on his ankles started.
What are those scars on his back?
You know he was whipped five
times, each time getting thirty-nine
strokes - one hundred and ninety-five
bruises on the back count themD
made by the Jews with rods of
lm-wood, each one of the one hundred
and ninety-fve strokes bringing the
blood Look at PauPs face and look
o. his arms Where did he get those
bruises? | think it was when he was
ashore amidst the shiv-
cred timbers of the shipwreck. I see
. cash in Paul's side. Where did he get |
that |? think he got that in the tussle
with the highwaymen, for he had been
IN peril OF robbers, and he had money OF |
his own. He was mechanic as well as
IN apostle, and think the tents he made
we're as good as his sermons.
There is wanness about Pau's looks.
What makes that? +? think part of that
came from the fact that he was for twenty
four hours on plank in the Mediterra-
,ean sea, suffering terribly, before he
vas rescued; for he says positively: II
vas night and day in the Deep" Oh,
vorn-out, emaciated old man surely you
must be melancholy; no constitution |
,ould endure this and be cheerful But